Categorical Errors in Sport and Fitness.

I am going to discus some common thinking errors made everywhere but I am going to put them in a sports context. Knowing the common errors we all make by both not thinking and poor thinking that can cause massive difficulties, with these you may go in to the first stage of grief which is denial, but you are just human and many errors are part of the human condition rather than personal, the effects for you though are personal.

Making categorical errors is common in all areas of life but I will stick to my professional area for examples. It is mainly about the words different and same which sounds so simple. Sometimes there are areas where there are subtle differences but the mistake can be made even when there are large differences that is of course ‘not same’. Treating different things as the same often leads to problems and is incorrect. Categories can often be agreed or arbitrary for convenience rather than real world. Once the agreement is made or there is a real difference. It is common to blur and then eliminate the boundaries between different things.

As the Confusion quote:

A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

— Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4-7, translated by James Legge

A clarity in language was identified thousands of years ago as a need for wisdom not just by Confucius but by Plato in Athens and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra who make similar observations.

In sport and fitness there is plenty of emotional input. The desire to do something or win is high. Wanting so bad you are fully prepared to believe any encouraging suggestion. This motivation to meet desires and results rather than actual achievement and actual performance is a constant trap that reduces real progress. The use of critical thinking is often missing due to the evolutionary factors to peoples perception. Early in life we attribute many things to luck/skill or ability/inability depending on the result. Perception is hard to influence after experience of perceived circumstance has given direction to our thought.

Science in sport is even ignored by high performers. To gain high performance or good levels of health, you have to do effective preparation and practice to get real results. Early real explanation and correction is needed. Differentiating what works and scientifically why and how. I will explain some terms and situations common to sport and fitness where I see systematic errors.

The first obvious error is incorrect technique. This though needs to be defined, feel free to argue the definitions but if your definitions are wrong it may hurt. Correct technique in sports is physics. The Biomechanics of the body rely on forces and the direction of these forces as they are applied in collaboration. Simple examples are swimming where the water offers greater resistance then air. If you hit water really hard with a flat hand it is a slap but if you make your hand very streamlined it will cut through with minimal resistance. Not hard and yet many people have technique that has resistance to the direction they want to travel and a subsequent small force to propel in the opposite direction. They often do the opposite they streamline the push or pull and resist the forward momentum. This happens physically and is a metaphor for all progress. Reduce resistance towards goal and maximise force to move towards it. The term squat for instance can be used for bad technical movement that likely produces injury. A good squat will follow good physics (mechanics) and be safe and have higher performance.

There are different parts of preparation and performance. The first mistake is jumping in with no preparation hoping natural talent will beat prepared opposition. Deliberate preparation to reduce resistance and increase movement towards your goal is needed. One word used in exercise is specificity where for example press ups improve press ups with some help to other actions, but have little benefit to actions that do not have an upper body press. Many people do the wrong exercises or programmes to get the desired results. The fashion for body building with weights has been misapplied and reduced potential and actual performance for many. Big muscles for body building do not help many sportspeople as the muscles get in the way and slow them down. That does not mean do not train with weights it means do it correctly for your needs towards your goal. Long distance athletes do not look like Body-builders and vice versa they may both train with weights. There are more subtle differences between Body-builders and strength athletes (Olympic weightlifting, power lifting) and Rugby. Here slight differences to the weight, sets and reps are needed for the different aims. Specific preparation for each event is needed and understanding the requirements of different sports and even health are often badly guessed. These categories are related to specific outcomes aligning them is vital.

Stage one is learning physical and mental skills. Evidence of the scientific variety pretty much backs up the general empirical and traditional ideas. ‘Healthy body, healthy mind’ holds water as do many other aphorisms. Learning is done best in a conducive environment with motivation towards learning. Simple carrot and stick motivation helps and the reduction of distractions (resistance), many social and cultural disablers appear with loud statement of perceptions of egos. There is an important category mistake the difference between performer and preparer. Being an excellent performer in your competitive group is no magic bullet for success in other conditions like coaching. Whether competitive or in helping others. The selfish dedication to beat those in front are pretty much opposite to those properties of effective helping (more selfless!). Separating learning of skills and tactics and conditioning and performance leads to clearer results. Learning is not performing and conditioning is not learning etcetera and setting each up deliberately and clearly rather than a mix of all where they interfere with each other.

I regularly see people wanting to learn and improve performance in competitive situations by competing only. Well the winner is the best prepared. Quite often the person with the biggest immediate advantages initially, but you need to prepare for higher levels of competition. Learning and development is not a competitive process even if the motivations are. As children, the best prepared is the larger, older child. Once a skill or tactic has been learned in a calm relaxed supportive manner then it can be slowly practised with increasing resistance. If you cannot perform a skill without pressure how do you hope to perform under intense pressure. A prepared opponent will not let you!

So stage one is learning, stage two is practice. Different stages but they do overlap so more able people sometimes skip stages or merge into each other. You need a good supporter (teacher/coach) to know who needs stage 1 and who can move quick to stage 2. The hard job for the teacher is not distinguishing actual ability and performances but dealing with the learners perception of ability and often parents perception as well. Some sports or activities who likely use this sort of progression are more closed sports where competition is often singular, where as more open sports like team sports or sports with a higher number of different skills can get stuck in an all in (lack of) method of training. The mistake is in open sports is insufficient learning and practice of foundation skills before immersion in competitive situations. The bigger child will probably want this most as they have the initial advantage and will probably win!

Another stage is training. Here skills already to appropriate levels of performance are practised in conditions closer to competition and under some pressure are worked on. Correct technique needs to be encouraged to reduce skill deterioration in over competitive situations.

The final stage is competition. It can contain learning, practice and training benefits, but is more about performance and then results. Lop sided competition of very able and low ability is not competition as the skills of the low side are insufficient leading only to scrappy survival battling detrimental to skill development for higher levels of performance. Early bad habits often limit eventual development and performance.

This set of stages is a set of categories and errors in distinguishing them and applying them result in lower performance. Sport has the advantage of clear results. Some people compete in things confidently in spite of never or only once succeeding rather than using the things that work most often. This categorising set is not set in stone but useful. This pattern of unclear categories and misunderstanding ‘same and difference’ is common in all areas of life. The errors in sport and fitness of bad technique, poor learning, unpractised and untrained and of course poor performance are common and resistant to change. Still with so many doing this it makes the few who don’t look good. So I’m off to learn some stuff then practice and train.

There are many areas and occasions where one thing is thought and acted on as if it’s one thing when it is another. A universal error is to treat an approximation as a fact. Let alone an approximation of an approximation, like in maths where a rounding up or down can be made in the right circumstance but then this rounding is used in another calculation with more rounding. The accuracy is a little off from the first rounding and is then magnified with the second rounding, vastly effecting accuracy. In sport there can be false belief created from not understanding the lack of accuracy and clarity of definition and purpose.